MOTHER, MAY I?

MOTHER, MAY I?

Memories. Summer camp. Moving.

Overstuffed chairs. Crew cuts. Black cats.

Parades.

Kids with water on their brain.

I’ve said this before. It’s an old story told by an old man. Once there was a cat named Peter. Peter was an outside cat. Peter became our family cat when I was six. He was dropped off to us, a hand-me-down from my Dad, whose colleague and their family had moved away. The cat was not part of the plan, so they left the cat behind.

I hated that cat. It would jump out from behind bushes, waiting to pounce on my legs, wanting to bite me. I have no recollection of any other family member having a relationship with this cat.

My mother hated cats.

My sisters made a mistake with the cat one day. They took pity on a fluffy little neighbourhood dog, perhaps a Pekingese, or Lhasa Apso. I forget. All fluff and squished face is all that I vaguely recall. What I remember is the clumps of dog hair on the lawn. My sisters had decided to feed it and give it some water.

In those days, dogs would run loose. No one walked their dogs. They let them out, and the dogs ran around, sometimes forming packs, but more likely to be lone wolves. It was a decade of lone wolves.

Dogs would runaround, digging in yards and shitting on doorsteps, curbs, sidewalks, driveways. From the driveways, they would pick up the scent of automobiles, and chase cars until often, an accident happened. An accidental death occurred.

On the day my sisters fed the little dog, I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Peter was in the the house. The dog was in the yard.

“Who was this dog and what is he doing on my back porch?”

As Vic Chesnutt says a scuffle ensued. I didn’t see the actual fight, but when it was over, there was nothing but dog hair all over the lawn. The yelps, the hissing, the claws, the blood. Peter was walking around triumphantly. No one messed with that cat.

Like I said, the cat came to us unwanted and unexpectedly.

We did not seek out the cat.

We never asked for a cat.

And then one day, the cat was gone. I don’t remember when the cat was gone, only that it went away for awhile. Was it in cat heaven or cat prison? Did it runaway, was it run over? Did my Dad or Mom drive to a different part of a town and drop it off? More likely, it just got pissed off like cats do. It may have found a family with better food. Was there a female cat that he got into trouble?

Regardless, one day the cat was gone, but the about a year later, Peter the Cat came back. Soon after, we moved again, to our second house in that same town. We would have three houses in 4 years. I think that is correct. Perhaps one of my siblings remember better. I certainly do not remember the cat moving with us. Most likely we abandoned it, just like the original owners.

We moved all the time when I was a kid, moving four times before I was even five. We even charged countries, moving from the stinky pulp mill of Port Alberni, BC Canada to the country of Montana. Three times in Missoula, that one town. Then another two towns and two states, finally moving back to Canada at age of 15. My Wonderbread Years. By the end of high school, I had moved 10 times.

They say that moving is stressful. In many ways moving was very stressful for me. We had a big family of seven kids and I was near the end. Number five son. What that means is my older brothers were graduating from high school, and contemplating wars and rice paddies, and running from the Draft and Johnson’s folly, Nixon and Kissinger’s bloodbath and defeat.

I was about to start my school years. My family all seemed busy with their own problems, with their own circles of friends. So many cars. My Dad worked at the Lumber mill that owned the company in a Canada we had moved from. Or the company in Canada owned the sawmill in Missoula. Who knows? Who remembers? Who cares?

Then one day, my second oldest brother, who had a job at the mill, was attacked in the parking lot by a man with a razor, resulting in hundreds of stitches.

Later my Father was assaulted at the same mill, by a disgruntled man, who my Dad had fired. He came back with a piece of metal in his hand, breaking my Father’s cheekbone and jaw. Violence was in the air. Not to say it was like living in the eye of a hurricane, but it seemed like things were always happening around me and I was left to my own devices to try to make sense of it all.

In Montana they have had a program of roadside crosses to mark the deaths on the highways. Until Jimmy Carter and great gas shortage there were no speed limits. The. It was mandated to be 55 miles per hour. Still the crosses multiplied.

At a young age, I was becoming a sensitive kid. A mommy’s boy is what they called kids like me in those days. Was it because I loved my mother so much, or because I wasn’t as close to my father as I wanted to be? He was never there. He would come on the weekends, and my Mother would tell him what had happened during the week, and he would yell at her. Even when I was the problem, I remember being conflicted. My Mother was there when I needed her, and he wasn’t. He would stomp around on the weekend. We were happy when he was away. But I craved his attention, my brother’s attention, anybody who wasn’t a girl or a woman.

I remember at age 8, standing in my bedroom screaming. I was so angry. I forget what I was angry about but I remember so clearly being uncontrollably angry.

But I took that anger and rolled it up into a superball of rage, and like Hank Hill, I sucked it up and drove it deep down into my gut. When I would feel the butterflies in my stomach, I knew they were angry butterflies, bursting to get out.

I did not have the tools to process my anger, or my fears. So I became a peace lover. A peace maker. But inside, I seethed, as I was afraid to express myself. If you ever wonder why Punk Rock was such a godsend, wonder no more. I felt alive in a way I never could express. When I jumped of that stage at the Smilin’ Buddha, I was not at peace. I was angry as fuck and I was peace by being angry.

The other night we were watching television, and this show came on. Fleishman Is In Trouble. It seemed like “Woody Allen lite”. Jesse Eisenberg, from The Social Contract, plays Fleishman and his wife is played by Claire Danes. I have been watching Claire Danes since My So Called Life in my late teens.

Claire Danes is the queen of cry acting. Nobody, and I mean nobody cries like Claire Danes. In this show, there are two children, a girl and a boy. The boy is a very sensitive kid, a mommy’s boy. Except his mommy’s not around because his mommy is a career woman. That is how it starts anyway. At one point in the show, Jesse Eisenberg explains to his young son, that he has to go to camp this year. He tries to make it sound like it will be fun, but the boy just whimpers and says “you know maybe we could just stay at home maybe we could just stay at home”.

But in the show dad wants to have affairs all summer and the kids are in the way. So off to camp he goes.

All of a sudden, I got very teary. It seemed to come from nowhere, but it was 55 years of bottle up emotion. I was filled with that rotten emotion that I had stuffed deep down in my gut.

Now I’m the kind of guy who can cry at commercials, which to be truthful is alone one brother told about another brother. I stole the line. That is what we do. We never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Which as I have explained was a lie my Father came up with, except that is not true either. Mark Twin said it first, and we know that wasn’t even his real name.

This tv show had a fairly manipulative storyline. But something struck a chord. I instantly remembered my own experience going to camp. I didn’t want to go to camp. I really didn’t want to go to camp. I remember my parents driving me to the camp along with a couple of their old overstuffed chairs, which they were donating to the camp. They kissed me and said goodbye.

I was left with the overstuffed chairs in the summer camp that I never asked for, both of us being donated.

Needless to say, I was lonely beyond belief. I cried constantly. I might’ve even have tried to call them and beg them to come and pick me up. I kind of remember I did. But I also remember they said “no you’re just gonna have to tough it out.”

Now being a sensitive boy in an all boy summer camp, you become a target. The other boys could sense my weakness. They could smell my fear. I became the butt of many pranks, and suffered various tests of manhood.

I always failed at manhood. Lucky for me. Life is long. Boo fucking who.

I have had many opportunities to develop my concept of manhood and where I fit in on the “real man who makes quiche timeline.”

But I was genuinely struck by how much this summer camp angle in the TV show brought back so many memories, and a few tears.

When I grew up in the 60s, people who were different were not celebrated. I remember going to a parade and they were all these kids with physical and mental challenges walking together as a group. One of them had a giant head, which I was told was “water on the brain”. Another one had a very tiny head; we called him Pinhead. Not the cute punk with the big smile, but a kid who had a major disability that he had to live with. If I were unkind, I would’ve called them freaks, but I didn’t. I was both kind and not kind at all. An America Psycho.

There was a boy down the street named Danny, who was slightly overweight, and supposedly “mentally retarded”. That’s what we called people like that then. It wasn’t meant as an insult.

And then it was.

It was just what we called people like that. Danny would make lots of funny noises, raspberry sounds, train sounds, whirring machine noises. He would run around in circles sometimes. In the summer, Danny decided to put on a fair. It would be games in his backyard, most likely there would’ve been cake and lemonade, and everyone was invited.

His fair was connected to the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy campaign. I felt very proud of Danny for wanting to do his fair, but I don’t think I went. But then again, I remember some of the games, and cut outs supplied by the Jerry Lewis connection, so maybe I did. Or maybe I just walked by.

In grade 6 we had an autistic kid join our class. They were trying to integrate children with challenges into the regular classrooms. We didn’t know what autism was. They tried to explain, but we had no clue. Another kid to avoid, ostracize, bully.

I didn’t bully, as I was bullied. I remember a kid named Jeff who hit me every day. One day I told him he could hit me all he wanted and I would still be smarter than him.

This integration was a noble idea, but it didn’t really work in practice. Or maybe it did. Maybe it took a decade or two to sink in. In junior high school the kids with challenges had their own classes but they were in the same school. We would go into the bathroom and a kid would be pulling on the paper towels until there was a giant pile of them on the floor. We would laugh. We called these kids “critters.”

In grade 6, I learned the word homo. Suddenly the worst thing you could be was a Homo. We were told that when we got in junior high school, it would get worse. In junior high school homo’s were faggots. Our sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Birkland, always with a cigarette hanging from her mouth, sat us down to talk to us about homosexuals and how not to use the words homos and faggots. She correctly explained that there are some people who love people who are the same sex as they are. That was OK, she said.

We listened, and for some of us this was an important message, and for others, it was a big joke with a painful punchline. With the accent on punch.

When I grew up, sex education was in its infancy. It was taught in 7th grade by the PE (physical education) teacher. Coach Big Balls would teach the boys and Miss Sweater with No Bra would teach the girls. Even then the evangelists would make a big deal about it. Sex education had nothing to do with feelings, only body parts. Some body parts went with others. And when something is essential as sex becomes defined by body parts, then everything is a competition. Difference was not celebrated. Difference was punished.

The other day I saw two men walking down the street holding hands. They were in their 40s. They were not glamorous; they were not overly attractive men; they were just two men who were in love holding hands. And I thought, my God, these men are so brave to walk down the street holding hands.

And then I thought that for 50 fucking years, men have been brave to walk down the street holding hands. And the thing that was wrong with the picture was the fact that they still had to be brave just to show their love in a public way.

Progress is a funny thing, it’s like a game of Mother- May I. Mother- may I take two steps? OK. You take two steps.

May I take one step. You take a step.

Wait, you took a step! You didn’t say Mother- May I ?

You have to go all the way back. You have to start over. That is what progress is like today. When I hear people talk about the good old days, I laugh.

Then I get angry.

The good old days. When women and gays knew their place. When difference was avoided. When people with disabilities were put into “homes”. When horrible words were slung around casually like a big swinging dick.

When dogs and cats were free from leashes. When they had the right to get hit by cars.

Those good old days. Gee, that old LaSalle ran great, again.